On October 17, 2019, a WhatsApp tax, as part of an austerity budget, triggered mass protests across Lebanon. Within days, the streets belonged to everyone, not just in Beirut but in many cities and towns, where people from diverse sectarian and political backgrounds gathered. Secular activists and party loyalists were side by side, chanting against the system. The scale of participation convinced observers that a threshold had been crossed and that the Lebanese people were finally turning against their sectarian leaders who ruled their lives by loyalties and patronage networks.
Those who read the moment as a systemic symptom were right but missed the mechanisms of the ruling parties and their sectarian supporters. Secular and leftist organizers saw a historic opening to penetrate the political system and break the status quo, but the crowds filling the squares were not yet ready to support anti-sectarian politics, and the ruling parties regrouped soon after. The WhatsApp tax did not simply trigger followers; it was driven by a declining economic status and a rupture in the patronage networks built around selective state support and beneficiaries.
Two facts were systematically under-read. Internally, mobilization was based on grievances rather than political organization, on dissatisfaction rather than on rejection of political leaders. Regionally, the environment was frozen: no direct war or external threat that could be leveraged to mobilize sectarian bases. When those circumstances changed, those overlooked realities struck back, and what was a liability became an opportunity for the ruling parties. Meanwhile, the parties never left the game. They regrouped, distancing themselves from the “political system” even as they held significant parliamentary and governmental seats, and readjusted their patronage networks through relief networks and unofficial development projects, waiting for regional changes to capitalize on security issues and sectarian loyalties once again. October 17’s failure was not moral but structural: the uprising had no institutions, and the system had nothing else.
Representation Without Leverage
After the protests declined because the government and sectarian parties cracked down on protest sites, and later because of the COVID-19 pandemic, elite and opposition activists turned to converting the movement into parliamentary seats, aiming at the 2022 elections. Those candidates ran as "change-makers" or independents against a field dominated by sectarian coalitions. The election results did not meet the expectations built after the uprising; the protesters' message reached the ballot box, but the opposition remained incoherent. With turnout just under 50%, 13 independent Members of Parliament (MPs) formed the "change MPs" coalition, but it did not last long because of internal disagreements over major issues.
The 2022 elections proved that the major sectarian parties could regroup and mobilize their bases around various issues. The Shia-majority areas stayed locked with Hezbollah and Amal, who were able to mobilize around their usual support for the resistance with promises of protection and construction. The Maronite majority, by contrast, shifted from one right-wing party to another, with the Free Patriotic Movement, the party of former president Michel Aoun, losing support after years of unfulfilled promises. The Lebanese Forces mobilized the Maronite voters after their stance on the October 17 side, driven by their rivalry with former President Aoun.
Ultimately, the Change makers were contained in a legislative chamber that runs on power flows between sectarian blocs and patronage networks; they could vote but not veto. They could legislate but not deliver. The system granted them representation without leverage.
The Reproduction of the Division
Despite surviving the election, the political system remained under pressure, with no solutions to the ongoing economic crisis and the presidential vacancy that began in October 2022. October 8th 2023 gave the ruling class the opportunity they had been waiting for to elevate their existential threat to the national level. The “Support Front” Hezbollah initiated against Israel restored the vertical polarization and the international attention the Lebanese sectarian system had longed for during 2019. The political scene was once again extremely polarized between supporting the war and rejecting Hezbollah’s seizure of the decision-making power over war and peace.
The escalations that followed affected the status quo significantly, and for the first time since 2008, Hezbollah and its allies were not given the blocking third in the newly formed cabinet in 2025, and Hezbollah’s military activity was banned for the first time since the Taif Agreement following the reopening of the front on March 2nd 2026. And when the government decided on direct talks with Israel amidst an ongoing war, the scene was divided into two camps, each defending a different vision of sovereignty. The first locates it in the state’s monopoly of violence, and the other in deterrence and resistance to the occupier.
The change bloc did not escape the pull. Most deputies elected in 2022 on the uprising's legacy took clear positions along the two axes. The bloc that entered parliament to reject vertical division ended up distributed across it. And the government, once seen as a hope for breaking consociational logic, has itself become a factor in polarizing the country.
A Survival Trap
For many optimists, the shift in the political order was seen as a victory for the October 17 uprising, with a general in the Presidential Palace in Baabda and a jurist from outside the traditional political establishment heading the government at the Grand Serail. However, the chronology does not support that reading. The presidency and the government emerged not from domestic pressure from below but from a regional reconfiguration: the war, the fall of the Assad regime, and regional mediations.
Domestically, the new government has done the same. In place of a different relationship with citizens, the new government has used familiar instruments: new taxes. Meanwhile, the parliament has voted to extend its mandate until 2028. Most change MPs who introduced themselves as coming from outside the traditional political alignment have taken sides in an extremely polarized situation that threatens to break apart Lebanese society.
Today, after seven years since the October 17 uprising, the sectarian ruling class has succeeded, even while threatening Lebanon's unity, by reproducing itself and reproducing the vertical political division around which it survives. Meanwhile, October 17 was routed around and, for many, remained a memory and a piece of rhetoric. The danger is not that the street was wrong, but that the ruling class has gone to great lengths to ensure its survival.